Matt Sauer saves the Dodgers bullpen in rout of Marlins

Jack Harris, Los Angeles Times on Apr 30, 2025

Published in Baseball

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The Dodgers’ bullpen got an unexpected, and badly needed, reprieve Tuesday night.

Entering the day, no team had relied upon its relievers more heavily. Thanks to injuries and ineffectiveness from the starting rotation, the bullpen’s 126 innings were far and away the most in the majors.

Now, they were staring down a second designated bullpen game already in this opening month.

Only this time, they were able to stay away from their most important arms.

Instead, in an 11-1 win over the Miami Marlins, the Dodgers’ planned bullpen game transformed into a bulk effort — with minor-league call-up Matt Sauer providing an all-important five-inning effort that saved the bullpen in a way the Dodgers’ rotation has too often failed to so far this year.

As early-season pitching injuries have piled up for the Dodgers, the bullpen has been strained in order to compensate.

Entering Tuesday, only 10 teams had even topped 110 innings from relievers this year. The Dodgers had six relievers with more than 13 innings pitched individually. No other club had more than four.

“I think the thing that’s probably most disconcerting is the bullpen leading Major League Baseball in bullpen innings,” manager Dave Roberts said Monday, after Tyler Glasnow became the latest member of the starting staff to land on the injured list.

“That’s where my head is at,” Roberts added, “as far as making sure we don’t red-line these guys.”

That will be no easy task over the next couple of weeks. Starting Friday, the Dodgers will play 19 games in a 20-day stretch. And with Glasnow and Blake Snell currently on the IL, they will begin it with just four healthy starters on their active roster.

“We thought our starters would be a position of strength for us from a workload standpoint, and unfortunately we lead all of baseball in innings for relievers,” pitching coach Mark Prior said Tuesday afternoon. “Sometimes that’s a good thing. But this early in the year, it’s probably not.”

Especially not after what the relievers did last October, combining for 82 innings in a grueling World Series run.

“Guys did some really heavy lifting,” Prior said.

And a short offseason only gave them so much time to recover.

Evan Phillips and Michael Kopech both started the season on the injured list, nursing injuries they sustained in the playoffs. While Phillips has since returned, another key member of last year’s team, Blake Treinen, has since gone down with a forearm strain.

It made Tuesday a seemingly daunting task, with the Dodgers opting for the type of bullpen-game strategy they used to often last October.

The good news: It played out far differently than expected.

Rookie left-hander Jack Dreyer took down the first two innings, giving up a lone run after Teoscar Hernández misplayed a ball in right field.

Then Sauer, a 26-year-old right-hander signed to a minor-league contract this offseason, took over for the next five, giving up just one run on five hits while collecting four strikeouts.

That allowed the Dodgers (20-10) to go to work at the plate.

Shohei Ohtani led the game off with a home run, his seventh of the season and first since returning from the paternity list last week.

Hernández atoned for his defensive miscue with two run-scoring doubles, tying him with Aaron Judge for the most RBIs in the majors with 29.

Mookie Betts had a two-run single as part of a two-hit performance, raising his batting average to .240 as he continues to try and snap his opening-month slump.

And former Cy Young-winning Marlins starter Sandy Alcantara never found his footing, exiting in the third inning with the Dodgers ahead 7-1.

The lead continued to grow from there; so much so that, after low-leverage right-hander Luis García pitched the eighth, utilityman Kiké Hernández took the mound for the ninth, a plastic “pitching helmet” covering his cap.